Multiple-Choice Tests

Mark 7:24-37

Some people don't like multiple-choice tests. They say they aren't fair. I think that is probably true but I liked them because I did them well. For me they made up for not working hard enough o really know something about something by giving you the answer to the question even if you didn't know much about the subject of the question in the first place. Because there were a choice of answers you knew that one of them was the right answer and in my case it was the ability to logically connect the question to the best answer that served me well. It wasn't that difficult. In fact it was probably too easy.

The multiple choice tests that Jesus was fond of giving were not so easy. In the first place you had to figure out what the choices were yourself. They weren't spelled on the page right below the question. Jesus was a teacher and a good one because he usually did not supply the answer readily but made the student work for it to discover it for him or herself. That is what I think is going on in this difficult text from Mark.

This is the text that many have taken at face value and decided is simply about the humanness of Jesus and that even Jesus could be wrong and more importantly can change his mind. I, myself have a sermon in my files entitled "Could Jesus be Wrong?" in which I make the case that being wrong is not what is wrong but not being willing to be wrong is what is wrong and even Jesus is more because he is not afraid to be wrong and be corrected. I had a discussion around the table at a meeting in Boston with other clergy this week and most held this view. Some even confessed a deep investment in this interpretation I suspect because of the fact that we are wrong so often ourselves. As each pastor talked about how they would preach this I was thinking about how differently the same word is being proclaimed around the churches of New England let alone the world today and how it is that the church manages to exist at all based on what I was hearing yet it is the mystery of the Word itself, despite what I and others foolishly attempt to say about it, that rises up in the human heart and keeps us going.  Obviously it is not my word or any other preachers words that keep the church going yet somehow even those words move us beyond where we were before they were spoken. I guess that is why we keep doing this. I have no illusions however. I know that the Church exists on earth because God wants it to exist which is itself a mystery when you realize that the church surely is not doing exactly what God wants in every instance, yet because God continues to call us and because people of faith just keep showing up wondering what it is all about, here we are.    

And so it is that I, with fear and trembling, wonder if there is something completely different going on here than I had previously supposed. Unlike the multiple-choice tests of my youth the answer is not given easily and we have to find it for ourselves. The answer must come from within our own hearts as we faithfully struggle with what is really happening here in this strange little text.  

As you may know this encounter in Mark has its parallel in Matthew's version of things. One commentator in his analysis of the Matthew version says it is helpful to think of this event as a kind of test given simultaneously to two sets of people, the woman and the disciples. I did find it helpful and more than that it seemed to give the interpretation of this passage more integrity and more power than the rather flimsy idea that Jesus could be so inconsistent even if it is a good thing to consider how we ourselves respond to being wrong about something. See what you think.

Matthew tells us that the woman approached Jesus with the traditional cry of a beggar: "Have mercy on me"(Mt. 15.2). She humbles herself and adds the title "Lord" - a term she will repeat. But here is where we are discomforted because Jesus appears to ignore her. He says nothing in reply to her cry. Remember that she has come for her daughter's sake. Her daughter is suffering but when Jesus appeals to Jesus with humility and respect he acts as if he doesn't hear her. She must decide if she will persevere.

As most of you know I have just returned from visiting my daughter and new granddaughter in a far-away place. The visit was a joyful delight but it was a brutal journey getting there and back (32 hours of traveling on the trip home) but if my daughter or her daughter were suffering I would do it all over again on my hands and knees if necessary. I think most of us know what we would do if our daughter was suffering. We would do whatever we had to do to save her.

Meanwhile (this is one commentator's insight and it makes sense to me) Jesus is testing the disciples. He ignorers the woman to see what they will do. "Send her away," they say. Jesus responds apparently agreeing with them by stating the status quo idea that he had been sent by God only to some people but not all people and this woman every one knew  not one of the some. But he doesn't send her away. Instead his eye is on the disciples to see what they will do now. Will anyone disagree? Will anyone wonder about the idea that God is selective? Will anyone say a word on behalf of the woman? No. they all nod their heads.

But the woman will not go away. Maybe it is  desperation for her daughter's suffering. Maybe it is trust. She kneels on the ground and simply says: "Lord, help me."

Surely the disciples are feeling a similar discomfort toour own. Surely the tension is mounting. they see this deperate woman whose heart is breaing and they know that she is not one of them and all of their experience has taught them that they have no obligation to help her yet since no one is giving them any easy way out here it cannot have escaped their thoughts the possibility that God's love and God's law as they have interpreted it might somehow be in conflict with itself.

In the story Jesus speaks again at this point. Perhaps he is facing the disciples when he says "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dog's" In this scenario the meaning is clear. Jesus is giving voice to the status quo. It is one thing to believe such things. It is quite another to hear the ugliness of our thoughts and feelings expressed out loud to a real human being. Will any of them speak up for her? Will one of them risk going against the status quo to love her? No, not this time. There will be other tests, multiple tests with many choices and they will do better but not this time.

Then Jesus turns to the woman who is still there. She, incredibly, is still there and now she has something to say: Yes Lord but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the masters table. It is brilliant in its' grace, tough but not without humor, as if she gets the joke and it is not on her after all. This woman has an attitude. She is strong and her faith is strong never mind what others have labeled her. Finally Jesus faces her. The test is over. For a moment Jesus had hidden the great goodness in his heart but the moment has quickly passed. She has chosen the right answer. And Jesus embraces her with the words "Great is your faith."

The disciples most surely are astonished. This woman who does not belong there is given the greatest of blessings.  We who divide ourselves up into us and them continue to be astonished if not shocked that Jesus says no to our divisions and separations. That is not the right answer on the multiple-choice test that we take every day. The answer is whatever is just and kind and reconciling. It is what brings us together not what tears us apart. That we are not all the same does not mean that we must hate whoever is different than us. God is bigger than our divisions even our most holy ones and is God of us all and if there is one thing that God has for all of us it is mercy for it is the one thing we need most. Thank God. Lord, have mercy. Help us to love one another.